


Forever and Change

by Jacobi



Series: Black Irish Boys [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Stucky - Fandom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-05
Updated: 2017-11-05
Packaged: 2019-01-29 20:44:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,062
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12638814
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jacobi/pseuds/Jacobi
Summary: If Steve was supposed to live forever, Bucky would live forever and a week.It took a week to plan a good funeral. And then Bucky would die on top of Steve’s grave.That’s just how it was supposed to be.Only the war had other plans.





	Forever and Change

  To Bucky, it went like this: if Steve lived to be a hundred and one, then Bucky would live to be a hundred and one and a week.

  It took a week to plan a good funeral. Bucky would know. He'd been to plenty. His stillborn brother's when he was seven, his aunt's when he was ten, Steve's Ma's being the most recent. And he'd been to his father's too. But that wasn't a good funeral, his Ma only planned that for three days. The body was in the ground before it was all the way cold, it seemed.

  So if Steve would die, Bucky would outlive him by a week to plan a good funeral and then Bucky would die on top of the grave. That was how it was supposed to go. Because boys like Steve couldn't be left alone.

  But the war didn't know that. Or maybe it was that the war didn't care about that.

  And as Bucky was fighting for a grip on the bent bar on the side of that railroad car, the unfairness of it made him so frustrated that he wanted to cry.

  Bucky had tried. He had been good. No breaking hearts, no busting lips. Well, only a few lips. Maybe more than a few. Only the lips of the enemy. And also perhaps the good guys who got on his nerves.

  But not Steve's lips and Steve got on his nerves more than anyone else in the whole goddamn universe. Christ, what the _hell_ has he been thinking, anyway?

  How was Bucky supposed to outlive Steve by a week if Steve's dumbass had actually gotten in the war all jacked up on some juice that would probably make him live forever?!

  So Bucky, he had to live forever and a week. But hanging onto that bent rail, he didn't have any high expectations for himself.

  But holy hell, what _more_ could Bucky have _done?_ He'd been so, _so_ good. He never left Steve's side even when human company felt like razor blades across his skin. Even when Steve's humanity made Bucky want to scream.

 _Pal_ , he wanted to say, _don't you know there's no place for kindness in a war?_

  When the train hurtled around a bend in the tracks, Bucky was thrown into the siding of the car over his arm. A tendon in his elbow snapped. He knew it had happened, but not because of the pain. It was just that suddenly, there wasn't anything more that was telling his hand to keep a good grip.

  Bucky almost made Steve promise in the hanging seconds before he fell not to spend a week planning Bucky's funeral. He almost told Steve that he was sorry, that all he ever knew was how to be Black Irish. He almost told Steve to find somebody, made Steve promise that he wouldn't be alone.

  Instead, Bucky memorized Steve's eyes.

  They were the clear blue-green of sea-glass. It was Bucky's favorite color. He wouldn't ever admit to it, but it was.

  Bucky didn't free fall all the way to the bottom of the chasm. If he had, he would have been dead on impact. If he had, maybe humanity would have had a place in the war.

  Bucky only free fell for the first two seconds, he counted. And then he glanced off of hard ice, taking the brunt of the impact with his bad shoulder. Something else snapped and Bucky knew that his arm was done for for sure.

  He tumbled and bounced and fell all the way down to the rocky and barren bottom of the chasm, bruised and bleeding. His skull was fractured.

  Maybe if he'd just loved Steve, Bucky thought hazily, cracking open his eyes against the blood and tears and the headache.

But he had, hadn't he?

  The problem was how Bucky loved. He loved mathematically, formulaically.

  _It took a week to plan a good funeral._

  Bucky loved practically.

  The snow was cold, the coldness of death. Bucky didn't think he'd ever be warm again.

  The people who came for him, they cut off his arm at the shoulder with no ceremony. It was practical, mathematical.

  And it hurt like fuck.

  Knowing Steve was alone made the bottom of Bucky's stomach drop out. It was a kind of visceral reaction, because this wasn't how this was supposed to go, this was so, _so_ unfair it made him sick up to his teeth, up to his eyes.

  _Steve was going to live forever._

_"Sometimes you just have to be there, Jamie. You don't always need to chase everyone down and finish things for yourself. Sometimes it's enough for him if you're just there with him."_

  That's what Sarah Rogers had said, but Bucky couldn't ever do it. It was in his bones to finish things for Steve, to wrap up loose ends so he didn't trip.

  The war was messy as hell, the war cut people off at bad times and left loose ends everywhere.

  They pushed Bucky's head in a bucket and he held his breath against the shock of frigid water.

  If Steve would live forever, then Bucky had to live forever and one week. That was how it was supposed to be, so fuck the war, he'd live forever and a week.

 

 

  But the thing about the war is that it just doesn't care. It makes loose ends all it wants. And if it wants to make you a loose end, it will.

 

 

  Steve fled from Bucky's memory at the first touch of electricity from the chair. Forever and a week for Steve became forever and a week because that's what was ingrained.

  _Forever and a week, forever and a week,_

Pick up the gun and bend it, smash it, the metal arm pulls on your spine

  _Forever and a week-_

Snap the neck of your handler, bust lips, break ribs, stop hearts

  _Ah, Buck, my Ma always says the only thing Black Irish boys are good for is busting lips and brea-_

 

The chair.

 

Repeat.

 

The chair.

 

Repeat.

 

The chair.

 

_Yes sir._

 

The chair.

 

  _It's Howard fucking Stark under your hands and holy hell didn't he have a little boy-_

 

The chair, the chair the chair the chair the chair

 

But.

 

Out of it all.

 

  The Winter Soldier was going to live forever and one _(1)_ week.


End file.
